Superscript in CSS only?

Honestly I don't see the point in doing superscript/subscript in CSS only. There's no handy CSS attribute for it, just a bunch of homegrown implementations including:

.superscript { position: relative; top: -0.5em; font-size: 80%; }

or using vertical-align or I'm sure other ways. Thing is, it starts to get complicated:

• CSS superscript spacing on line height;
• Beware CSS for Superscript/Subcript on why you arguably shouldn't style superscript/subscript with CSS at all;

The second point is worth emphasizing. Typically superscript/subscript is not actually a styling issue but is indicative of meaning.

Side note: It's worth mentioning this list of entities for common mathematical superscript and subscript expressions even though this question doesn't relate to that.

The sub/sup tags are in HTML and XHTML. I would just use those.

As for the rest of your CSS, the :after pseudo-element and content attributes are not widely supported. If you really don't want to put this manually in the HTML I think a Javascript-based solution is your next best bet. With jQuery this is as simple as:

$(function() {
  $("a.external").append("<sup>+</sup>");
};

You can do superscript with vertical-align: super, (plus an accompanying font-size reduction).

However, be sure to read the other answers here, particularly those by paulmurray and cletus, for useful information.